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I didn’t expect six to try and draw on me at once, but, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting anything. I like to be surprised.
Now I’m fast – we’re talking brain altered by top neurosurgeons fast – but I’m not usually fast enough to shoot six humanoids before any can get off a shot… especially since I didn’t have the drop on them or anything. Still, I had drawn my two blasters and shot two of them before the rest had even a full grip on their guns. Those shots panicked the rest, and only one bolt came even near me. When the noise died down, there were more than six bodies lying on the ground. I wasn’t sure if it was my shots or theirs that killed the others, but, frankly, in the past few seconds I had grown a deep-seated prejudice against purple aliens with tentacles coming out of their heads and thus didn’t really care.
Their blood was orange, if you were curious. If there’s come correlation between alien skin color and blood color, I never figured it out.
“Anyone else?” I asked as I put my guns back in their holsters. The aliens made a number of sounds, all of them variations of the word “No” according to my universal translator.
I dropped Niko out so Niko could do what Niko does – collect DNA and other info off corpses for verifying I had done my job – while I headed for the door. This was a civilized city in that I could expect police to show up at some point. In some places, the reaction time for police was so quick they’d be there half-way through the trigger pull. In others, I had enough time to play a couple hands of Solitaire before making my hasty escape. I used to look up police response time before landing on the planet, but I stopped a while ago to add a little spice to otherwise boring hits.
Niko crawled up my leg and into my pocket, his spider-like body folding back into a ball. Hopefully one of those I killed was the target, but, if not, I was still getting off this rock either way. I wasn’t the one who screwed this up.
I was just a couple yards from the bar when I heard sirens coming my way. Now, if I was after a dangerous psychopath, I’d probably be quieter about it – if I weren’t me, that is. Well, maybe the first officer on the scene could at least serve as a cautionary example to others.
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